"Perhaps no one of us is good enough for Love. Yet we can try to be, by serving . . ."
Lanyard hung his head; and in accents of quiet conviction Eve de Montalais pursued: "Something has happened. I thought so, from your manner this afternoon, now I am sure. It isn't that you have ceased to care for me—"
"You know it is not that."
"What, then? It must be something quite as serious, you couldn't hold out against me as you do if it were anything less. Michael: you can't refuse to tell me now."
He made a sign of submission combined with a plea for time in which to assort his thoughts. Indisputably nothing less than the truth would satisfy her; but it might be that something less than the whole truth, so sure to terrify the woman, would serve.
And while he sat turning the matter over in his mind, their waiter approached.
"Monsieur Paul Martin?" the man enquired, with an execrable attempt to give the words a French inflexion.
In his abstraction, Lanyard signified an impatient negative, but Eve de Montalais was less thick-witted.
"What name?" she quickly enquired.
"Paul Martin, ma'm. He's wanted on the telephone—a long distance call."